ROCKFORD — A banquet Friday will feature a guy who stands on top of his desk sometimes to make a point and a woman who dresses up as favorite characters from books.

It will be about “queezles” and “durplelurkers” and other words that got made up at Rockford Lutheran this year. It will be about music, food and movies from around the world and how they are used to open doors to studies about history and politics.

People attending this year’s Excellence in Education Banquet will get to hear these stories and more Friday night from the best of the best: winners of the 2013 Golden Apple Teacher Awards.

Five teachers were honored this year — Michael Lantz of Guilford High School, Kathryn Linden of East High School, Bethany Pitman of Rockford Lutheran Jr/Sr High School, Jilian Reints of Belvidere and Belvidere North high schools and Michael Winebrenner of North Boone Middle School.

In the eyes of their bosses, peers and students these teachers share a skill that helps students succeed: They connect.

The banquet starts at 5:30 p.m. with a red carpet arrival at the Radisson Hotel and Convention Center.

Anyone who knows the teachers, goes to or went to the schools or supports teaching and education is encouraged to attend, ready to cheer with poms poms, signs and school colors.

You don’t have to attend the banquet to participate in the red carpet arrival.

“There is no profession more important to our entire community than teaching,” said Kristina Reuber, executive director of the Golden Apple Foundation, the organization that selects each year’s winners and helps promote educational excellence throughout the region.

“They are teaching our children, and our children are the future of the community.”

Michael Lantz

Michael Lantz knows how to get a teenager’s attention.

Feed them. He has at least eight food days each year.

As a world geography, government and economics teacher at Rockford Guilford, Lantz uses the music, movies and food from around the world to help his students understand how people live in other countries.

Lantz uses the feasts to start teaching his students about world agriculture, food production and markets.

“A lot of what we study in geography is people, how they interact and conflict,” Lantz said. “Well, we see that every day. Just how individuals have stories, groups of people have stories, too.

And this is the study of their stories.

“I try to make it fun.”

Over spring break, Lantz’s students had to watch a movie set in Africa and write a review about it. The students will share their reviews with each other and discuss how life and culture is expressed in those stories.

Page 2 of 4 - “I do a lot of things with music and food and movies because I want kids to be turned on by what I’m teaching,” Lantz said. “I don’t want to be the teacher whose students say ‘I hate world history.’ ... It’s about finding that balance between fun and challenging.”

As a government and economics teacher, Lantz also teaches personal finance and current events.

“We watch a lot of news together,” he said. “Mostly, I try to help them see how government affects us. I tell them: ‘The more you know, the more the world will make sense to you, the more say you’ll have and the more empowered you’ll be to make decisions.”

Kathryn Linden

Kathryn Linden has a simple philosophy: If she’s not having fun teaching it, she doubts her students are having fun learning it.

And if they aren’t having fun, she’s losing them.

That’s why the Rockford East English teacher put on gobs of make-up and poofs and ruffles to come to school as Effie Trinket, the over-the-top character from the futuristic best-seller, “The Hunger Games.”

Students in Linden’s class read the book, had a movie premiere party when the film was released and took a field trip to watch it together.

“My students walk in the door talking about what we’re reading and walk out the door talking about the novel,” she said. “That’s a great feeling. ... I want them to love reading.”

Linden teaches her freshmen students three novels a year — two that either she chooses or they choose as a group and “Romeo and Juliet.”

The Shakespearian classic is a harder sell among students, Linden said, but she’s got a few tricks up her sleeve.

One is the collection of old homecoming and prom dresses that she brings in for “Juliet” to wear.

Also this year, students read a short story about actor Michael J. Fox’s testimony to Congress about Parkinson’s Disease.

“Students really didn’t know much about him. We watched some old clips from his movies, and we learned about Parkinson’s,” Linden said. “The students really got into it. They said ‘We need to do something for him.’ So just last weekend, we went up and ran in a 5K to raise funds for Parkinson’s research.

“To me, it’s helping my students dip their feet into the world. ... They read something. They were moved by it. And they did something about it. It makes their reading worthwhile.”

Bethany Pitman

English is about hard rules — like the rules of research papers — and creativity, the ability to look beyond and break the traditional rules.

Page 3 of 4 - Bethany Pitman, who teaches eighth graders and high school sophomores, gets to dabble in both worlds with her students at Rockford Lutheran.

It helps to have a good knowledge of pop culture, too, Pitman said.

“If you can relate a plot line of ‘Julius Ceasar’ to ‘One Tree Hill’, you’re going to get there. ...

That show is really popular among my students, and there are a lot of the same themes at play — the jealously, the greed and the fear.”

Speaking of fear, Pitman likes to ease the fear of writing a major research paper by playing the song “Staying Alive” and giving students Lifesaver candies.

“I tell them ‘We’re going to do this. This is sink or swim time, but that’s what the Lifesaver is for ... You’re not allowed to sink. I won’t let you.’”

Even the research assignments in Pitman’s class are geared toward making a connection with young people.

In one assignment, she’ll ask for a research paper of a favorite author. Then, she’ll ask students to research the decade when that author was a teenager and find examples of how events that were going on in the world during that time helped influence that writer.

Another unique assignment in Pitman’s class is for students to make up their own words.

“It’s just a fun thing we do,” she said. “They need to do the work and the research. They need to write the definition. ... Then, it becomes a word we use. Like queezle. That’s the feeling before you sneeze, but you don’t.”

Jilian Reints

Becoming an art teacher married two life loves for Jilian Reints: the desire to teach and be an artist.

In high school she met an art teacher who showed her what she wanted to be.

“That person put it all together for me,” Reints said. “I knew after that class that I wanted to do both — be a teacher and be an artist.”

Reints teaches all of the art classes at Belvidere and Belvidere North high schools except ceramics. She teaches art fundamentals, drawing, painting and even computer arts and photography.

Reints won the Jack Wolf Excellence in Teaching award two years ago for a pen and ink art project in which students created pieces that spoke to particular social issues.

“I want them to have meaning in their art,” she said. “It’s not just skill. They need to do the visual, but they also need to learn how to apply what they think or feel.”

One of her students did a piece on obesity. Others tackled political issues like the presidential campaign and money’s role in the oil industry.

Page 4 of 4 - “One of the biggest things for me is developing that rapport with a student,” Reints said. “Art is very personal. What our students create is about their homes. It’s about their lives. Sometimes, that’s happy, and sometimes it’s not. ... My class needs to be a safe place. Otherwise, I’ll just get hand turkeys and bowls of fruit.”

Reints credits her mother, Anne Marchert, for her successful career. Marchert was never a teacher, “but she should have been,” Reints said.

“My mom was an incredible people person and a painter. I got that from her, and I have her to thank.”

Michael Winebrenner

Mike Winebrenner loves history, and he loves to talk.

He didn’t think of teaching as a career at first, but his gregarious personality steered him that way. He’s a kid at heart.

“I’m the kind of teacher who will get up on his desk,” Winebrenner said. “I’ll scream and act out things. Sometimes I’ll teach the whole class in a British accent. ... The kids love it,” he said.

Everything he does is about the kids, Winebrenner said. Everything he teaches his eighth grade social studies students at North Boone Middle School needs to resonate with them.

“When I talk with them about World War I, we talk about militarism and how that causes tension,” he said. “We talk about their relationships with their peers. How when two people even talk about fighting, how that puts everyone on edge. How they try to get people on their side to form alliances and how that brings more people into the conflict.”

Teenagers are Winebrenner’s passion: teaching them and helping them become young adults.

“I’ve been accused of being immature by several people,” Winebrenner joked. “It’s not always a bad thing. ... I went into teaching so I didn’t really have to grow up. I get to hang out with eighth graders all day, and I can share all of my stories with them.”

Teaching history is storytelling, Winebrenner said. He hopes to pass that skill on to his students.

“At the beginning of the year I like to start out with a conversation about what my students would do if they had unlimited resources and never had to fear being wrong,” he said. “Then, I tell them, ‘In this class, I give you everything you need to succeed, and you never have to worry about being wrong.”